India promises to prop up Karzai

[xchrom]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MJ06Df04.html

President Hamid Karzai's two-day visit to India presages a major realignment of regional powers over the Afghan problem. India has taken a carefully thought-out decision to pitch for a key role in the so-called "endgame" in Afghanistan, commensurate with its aspirations as a regional power and in defense of what it considers to be its vital interests against the backdrop of a developing situation about which it is genuinely concerned.

India, however, will not get away unchallenged in its newfound "pro-activism" and how the ensuing regional rivalries will play out in the coming period remains far from clear. The cloudy horizons may have got just a bit darker as Karzai's presidential jet takes off from the Indian capital on Wednesday.

Karzai, too, had a mission on his mind as he headed for Delhi. Late on Monday evening, on the eve of his departure for India, he


spoke candidly about his political predicament. His much-touted reconciliation policy toward the Taliban is at a dead-end and for crafting a way forward he needs to get a fresh mandate from a loya jirga (tribal assembly) that will be convened for the purpose.

He blamed Pakistan for being uncooperative in the peace process and yet he acknowledged that he needed to talk to Islamabad, being mindful that it also is what the United States and the international community want him to do - despite the wave of "anti-Pakistan" sentiments sweeping large sections of Afghan society and notwithstanding the deep and entrenched aversion to any truck with Pakistan over the Taliban that many figures within his own coalition harbor.

[Igel]

1. Pakistan won't like it.

Of course, Pakistan's made Karzai's visit to India all but mandatory. He hasn't been sufficiently servile, and now has compounded his error before Allah.

Allah, I mean Pakistan, won't see it that way. Pakistan requires that Karzai be their lickspittle, and the powers that pee in Pakistan would consider anything other than an Afghan satrapy to be wrong. The uppity Karzai is an affront to their inherent dignity and superiority, his sin is to transgress the natural order of the universe, and so he must not be tolerated.

Then he goes to Indial, dar al islam become dar al harb. Another violation of their dignity, which seems to be "deflowered" on an hourly basis. (We have words for such, IIRC.)

[Demeter]

2. Greater Fool Theory

Tag, you're it, India.